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General discussion

Any way to stop employees from using chat programs over LAN?

by TimZ Dec 20, 2005 6:00AM PST

Hello - We've got a pretty small office network. Is there any way to stop people from using chat programs like AOL IM or similiar? Any software or anything? We have employees abusing this chat software and I'd like to put a permanent stop to it.
Thanks for any info
Tim

Discussion is locked

4 Posts
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Yes
by Dijman Dec 20, 2005 7:18AM PST

I would advise you to check the help forums of the chat programs and find a faq for people who can not get the program to connect (try to replicate those problems). Chat programs have specific ports,(ports are basically ways for information to get into your computer), which the programs can not pass information without. A good start would be to find the port numbers these programs use(list of default ports at bottom of message), then you can log on to your gateway (network box) by typing its ip address into your browser, the box should have an option to block specific ports. P.S. The IP address of your gateway can usually be found in windows by going to Start-> Control Panel-> Network Connections-> Local Area Connection, clicking the support tab, then press the details button; the address should be the group of numbers to the left of "Default Gateway". This may not solve the problem but is a good start.
The Following is a list of ports used by IM clients, although they are port agile and will try to find other open ports:
MSN: TCP 1863,TCP 689, UDP ports 13324 and 13325, TCP 1503
Yahoo: TCP 5050,TCP port 4443
AIM: TCP 5190, 23, 20, 21

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ABSOLUTELY!
by caktus Dec 22, 2005 5:33AM PST

FIRE'EM!

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Maybe you can...
by Papa Echo Dec 25, 2005 8:22AM PST

...remove all the chat progrms. Configure the system so that only the "Network Manager" can install programs. Central Control.

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agree + more
by AInTeL Dec 30, 2005 1:30AM PST

Manually removing the IM software from the computer and setting account restrictions would be the best option. I assume most workers would get the hint and give up there.

Your employees can just get a different IM or change the ports on the ones they use now and you'd have to be faily advanced to deal with that.

I'd like to warn you though, that if your staff is desperate and clever enough, they may use web-brower IM's. Those are replicas of the IM programs they have now only though Internet Explorer/Firefox/Netscape/etc. In that case there's nothing you can do except shut down their entire internet or just give them a real-life, stop-or-lose-your-job warning.

Good luck,
-aintel

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